The Strategist

U.S. suspends forced sale of TikTok business



02/11/2021 - 08:23



The forced sale of the USA business of TikTok, initiated under Trump, has been suspended indefinitely. The reason was that the new administration decided to reassess potential threats from the company.



Solen Feyissa
Solen Feyissa
The deal on the compulsory sale of the American segment of TikTok to Oracle and Walmart has been suspended indefinitely, writes The Wall Street Journal citing sources.

According to the publication's sources, the deal, initiated by former President Donald Trump, was postponed because President Joseph Biden's administration decided to conduct its own review and assessment of the potential threat to data security due to TikTok's collection of information about American users.

"We plan to develop a comprehensive approach to protecting U.S. data that addresses the full range of threats we face. This includes risks associated with Chinese applications and other software used in the U.S.  In the coming months, we plan to look at specific cases to fully understand the risks we face," said Emily Horne of the National Security Council.

According to WSJ sources, negotiations between representatives of ByteDance, which owns TikTok, and officials of local national security authorities go on. The main topic of discussion was security of data and means to keep the government of China from getting on the data that the Chinese firms gathers about the US users, the newspaper's sources specify.

source: wsj.com